Publications - Advice

A pressing social issue
In the future, individuals will extend their working lives until a more advanced age than is currently the case. While for many people this will not pose a problem, a portion of the labour force will find it difficult to work until the age of sixty-five, and even more to sustain their employment even longer. How can we ensure that members of this group remain active participants in the labour market? This is important because many people attach a sense of value to participation and it may contribute to their health. Moreover when employees work longer, the sustainability of collective arrangements may be improved. The central question this advisory report seeks to answer is how to contribute to continued labour participation from a health perspective.
Read more >

In this advisory report the Council for Public Health and Health Care draws attention to the emergence of consumer eHealth. The Council defines consumer eHealth as information and communication technologies offered directly on the market to consumers without the intermediary of care providers, the aim of which is to support or improve users’ health.
Read more >

As of 2006, the position of healthcare insurers in the healthcare system has changed. Healthcare insurers are now expected to purchase affordable, accessible high-quality healthcare on behalf of their policyholders. They purchase this healthcare in a competitive procurement market, and occasionally act as regional healthcare coordinators and participate in pre-competitive alliances. In this role the insurers have acquired an increasing degree of freedom, but they are exposed to greater financial risk.
Read more >

The organisation of information systems should focus on the patient. A proper information system is of vital importance for the effective and efficient provision of healthcare. This applies not only at the micro level to patients and care providers but equally at the meso level, where health insurers, institutions and municipalities, for instance, require information to ensure accessible and affordable good-quality care for patients, clients and residents respectively. At the meso level healthcare providers also require reflective information against which to benchmark themselves and improve their services. At the macro level the government requires information to safeguard the quality, accessibility and affordability of healthcare provided in the Netherlands. Information is additionally required for policy, implementation and research purposes.
Read more >

Questions
How will Dutch healthcare develop in the long term? And what opportunities and dilemmas must the healthcare system be prepared for? These are the questions at the core of this advisory report. Because crystal balls only appear in fairy tales, there are no cut-and-dried answers available. What we can do, however, is explore the possible options, as well as their consequences for healthcare organisations and government policy.
For example: what trends will we see in life expectancy and quality of life, both of which have continued to exceed expectations for decades? Opinions on the matter are divided. Equally uncertain are the expected differences in health between higher and lower educated people. There are a variety of possible scenarios regarding growth in the healthcare sector, which also raises the issue of the extent to which we are prepared to finance healthcare expenses collectively, and to ensure that healthcare remains accessible to everybody.
Read more >

Are management boards and supervisory boards equipped to ensure the quality and safety of care, both now and in the future?
Care institutions are currently facing turbulent times: many old certainties are disappearing, with a fight for survival looming on the horizon. Successfully navigating these developments will require effective brinkmanship. There is a very real danger that the focus on quality and safety could suffer as a result. This is all the more urgent in view of the growing external pressure to provide greater transparency and ensure the quality and safety of care.
Read more >

The introduction of regulated market forces in patient care in 2006 was intended (among other things) to effect a shift from supply-driven to demand-driven care, whereby the provision of care would be based not on the existing supply but on the demand and needs of patients. In essence, this transition would enable (though not oblige) patients to participate in the decisions about and implementation of their care. Though some of the developments to come out of this have been positive, it is clear that now, more than six years on, patients still have insufficient opportunity to participate in care, despite the fact they are eager to do so.
Read more >

In the Dutch healthcare system, solidarity is premised on the notion that the system belongs to everyone and benefits everyone. At any given moment there are those who are bearing the cost of premiums so that others can receive the facilities they need. But those who are paying now know that there may come a time when these roles are reversed and they become the recipients. Consider it a form of delayed exchange; though the exchange is not a requisite, it offers an assurance in case of need.
Read more >

Summary
Effective basic care is important for making care accessible, affordable and good-quality. However, the associated first-line health and welfare facilities are coming under increasing pressure. The number of people with a chronic illness is growing and care issues are becoming ever more complex. Many of the health problems people experience are not isolated but are tied to behaviour or to social or other environmental factors such as family, relationships, work, income and housing. In this recommendation, these multi-faceted problems serve as a lens for the approach taken by basic care. Good examples demonstrate that much personal and social damage (both short and long-term) can be prevented by structuring care to cater for multi-faceted problems. The core policy question addressed in this recommendation is: How should we rearrange things at the ‘gateway’ to healthcare in order to improve accessibility, clarity of problems and the available care options where multi-faceted problems are involved?
Read more >

The Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport and the State Secretary for Security and Justice have asked the Council for Public Health and Care (RVZ) what is required for the successful introduction of the Forensic Care Act (Wfz) and the Mandatory Mental Healthcare Act (WvGGZ), which are together designed to improve the alignment of forensic and regular mental healthcare. This would benefit patients and offenders as well as society itself, as effective, coordinated care can reduce recidivism, thus helping to make society safer.
Read more >

What measures are needed in order to guarantee proper care and a good quality of life for care-dependent elderly people in the future? That is the question at the heart of this Council for Public Health and Care recommendation. The Council understands the term ‘care-dependent elderly people’ to refer to ‘elderly people who are unable to independently take care of the essential aspects of their lives, namely care, accommodation and well-being’. It is the Council’s aim to ensure that future care for the elderly is organised such that people enjoy better health in their later years, with a good quality of life and in their desired living environment. Collective care must therefore focus on care-dependent elderly people.
Read more >

Diseases of affluence, or loss of health due to lifestyle habits associated with modern affluent society, usually feature far less in prevention policy compared with infectious diseases and accidents. This is disproportionate to the degree of widespread illness they cause; improved lifestyle habits could increase not only life expectancy, but also the number of healthy years and years free of disability/chronic conditions. Right now we are seeing a (sometimes significantly) increase of life expectancy without a corresponding increase in the number of years free of disability/chronic disease. Within the context of increasing demand for care, prevention offers major societal advantages in terms of both paid and unpaid productivity and participation. Prevention is one possible solution to rising healthcare costs and the looming and imminent difficulties in the labour market.
Read more >

The medical specialist care landscape in 2020 will look very different from how we know it at present. The need for change is driven, on the one hand, by the strong growth in the demand for healthcare that the years ahead will bring and, on the other, the limited financial scope for meeting that demand both now and in the future. Furthermore, the nature of the demand for healthcare is changing: we expect to see increasing numbers of chronically ill patients who, moreover, will often be suffering from multiple disorders simultaneously.
Read more >

In the trend of rising life expectancies, the Netherlands continues to lag behind a number of other European countries. Differences in the quality of care among individual hospitals and healthcare providers are inexplicably large. The quality of care in the caring sector is failing to deliver in a number of areas, while patient satisfaction could clearly be better. Results are also disappointing when it comes to prevention; unhealthy lifestyle choices such as smoking, excessive alcohol use and insufficient physical exercise are simply too entrenched. All financial preconditions are keyed to financing treatments rather than achieving specific results.
Read more >

The 13th of April, 2011 the Council for Public Health and Health Care in the Netherlands has published its advisory report ‘Innovative education and training and new health care professions’.
Read more >

The government’s role is to createa perspective and the conditions for good, sustainable care properspective, which matches changing care requirements of a changing client population. Efforts to manage costs within the care sector will reflect the government’s vision for the sector.
Read more >

What applies to individuals also applies to the Dutch population as a whole: even if you are in good health, you could gain a lot by, for example, getting more exercise, not smoking and avoiding work-related stress. In the European health ‘league table’, the Netherlands is now about in the middle. We are better than average, but we are no longer amongst the best.
Read more >

The Netherlands is one of the leaders in ‘late parenthood’ in Europe, together with Italy and Spain. For a quarter of the Dutch women aged 40 or older who gave birth in 2005, this was their first child.
Read more >

In the Netherlands’ new healthcare system, a great deal is expected of the (insured) patient: he or she is required to become a ‘care consumer’, making rational choices on the basis of comparative information, thus incentivising both care providers and health insurers to raise quality standards.
Read more >

The demand for care is growing: the number of people with dementia alone is set to rise from 175,000 in 2002 to 412,000 by 2050; the number of stroke patients is forecast to increase from 118,000 in 2000 to 152,000 by 2020.
Read more >

At the end of June 2006, the report Zinnige en duurzame zorg (Sensible and Sustainable Care) was published, addressing issues such as which criteria should be applied in order to identify priorities for the funding of care from collective resources.
Read more >

The dissemination of best practices in the care sector is taking place far more slowly than is generally thought advisable. It is detrimental to health gains and to the well-being of care consumers, and leads to unnecessarily high costs.
Read more >

At regular intervals, concerns crop up in public and political life about certain kinds of alternative medical treatments and those offering such treatments and in whom people place their trust, often blindly.
Read more >

A reorganization of acute care would enable more lives to be saved Acute care is usually a subject of great interest. That is hardly surprising, since an ambulance’s wailing siren and flashing lights tend to make an impression on most people. Everyone knows that speed is of the essence.
Read more >

The focus of this study is the customer. Does the ‘European’ healthcare customer really exist? There are significant differences between the member states in terms of healthcare supply and demand.
Read more >

Eating less, keeping fit(exercising), no smoking, less drinking. These are all well known examples of advices for healthy living that, if they were followed, would lead to considerable health benefits.
Read more >

The Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport has asked the Council for its advice on current forms of and future developments in e-health, on the relevant threats and opportunities and on the measures to be taken by the government and prac-titioners in the field in order to exploit opportunities and re-duce threats.
Read more >